Court Rightly Emphasizes Fairness In Ruling On College Magazine Funds

July 1, 1995

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared a small patch in the thicket enveloping the nation's church-state issue. The court said if a government-supported university subsidizes student publications that are nonreligious, it also must support financially those with a religious mission.

In a 5-4 vote indicative of the delicate nature of relations between church and state, the court said the University of Virginia violated a student group's free-speech rights by refusing to allocate money for its Christian magazine. The ruling rested on fairness, that it's unfair for the university to use money from a student activities fund to subsidize 118 groups, while excluding one that published a religious magazine.

It's easy to overreact to the decision. Those who fear the ruling signifies a major break in the wall between church and state, as well as those claiming a huge victory for "religious freedom," should pay close attention to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for the majority.

The ruling does not, he said, mean states could subsidize churches. Instead, Kennedy declared, the ruling means states should treat student groups neutrally by offering support to them, whether they're religious or nonreligious in outlook.

If the university had rejected all student groups applying for subsidies, the Christian organization headed by then-student Ronald Rosenberger could have been treated the same way. When Rosenberger was turned down in a request for $5,800 from the student fund, the university was vulnerable because it didn't treat him neutrally.

It's not always easy to draw a line between religious and nonreligious publications. Rosenberger complained, for instance, that Jewish, Muslim and other Christian groups received university money for their activities and magazines.

The university countered that those groups were primarily cultural, while his was obviously religious. The court declined to accept that argument as pertinent.

This ruling applies to a publicly financed university, whose students attend voluntarily. Whether the decision applies to lower levels of public education, where attendance is compulsory up to a certain age, may have to be decided separately by the courts.

The court's decision leaves many other aspects of the church-state issue still in dispute. For now, on this ruling alone, the court acted sensibly.